European Integration and State Structures: What Connections?

The chapter analyses the impact that Switzerland’s experience of “integration without membership” has had on the country’s federal system. It argues that integration via the bilateral agreements has exacerbated the centralisation trend already at play at the domestic level and thus put Swiss federalism under pressure. A range of counter-measures have been adopted, however, which have enabled the country to manage those pressures reasonably successfully. Noting that integration has mainly had the opposite effect in the UK, a centrifugal one, the chapter argues that the policy response called for is nonetheless a similar one: the need to strengthen